On the cohomology of free \(p\)-torus actions (Q689650)

Under certain conditions the cohomology of the total space of a fibre bundle \(F\to E\to B\) is the cohomology of a ``twisted tensor product'' \(H^*(E)=H^*(S^*(F)\otimes S^*(B),\widetilde {d})\), where \(S^*(- )\) denotes the singular cochain complex and \(\widetilde{d}\) is a ``twisting'' of \(d_{S^*(F) \otimes S^*(B)}\). This can be used in studying group actions, if applied to the Borel fibration \(X\to X_ G\to B_ G\), thus considering the cohomology of \(G\) with coefficients in \(S^*(X)\). In the special case of a 2-torus \(G:=(\mathbb{Z}/2)^ r\) of rank \(r\), the cellular complex \(B_ G\) can be chosen, such that \(H^*(B_ G;\mathbb{Z}/2)\) equals the cellular cochain complex \(C^*(B_ G;\mathbb{Z}/2)\) and is a polynomial ring \((\mathbb{Z}/2)[s_ 1,\dots,s_ r]\) in \(r\) variables of degree 1 (as an algebra with unit). An approach due to V. Puppe admits a generalization of G. Carlsson's estimate for the length of a free \(G\)-CW complex \(X\) (i.e. the length of \(H^*(X_ G;\mathbb{Z}/2)\) as a module over \(H^*(B_ G;\mathbb{Z}/2))\) \(L(X)\geq r+1\) to paracompact, finitistic free \(G\)-spaces with the aid of minimal additive models \(M^*_ G(X;\mathbb{Z}/2):= (H^*(X;\mathbb{Z}/2) \otimes H^*(B_ G;\mathbb{Z}/2),\widetilde {d}_ X)\) of the construction above. For \(p\) an odd prime \(B:=H^*(B_ G; \mathbb{Z}/p)=C^*(B_ G;\mathbb{Z}/p)\) is no longer a polynomial ring. But for every prime \(p\) it is an algebra over a polynomial subring \(R:=(\mathbb{Z}/p) [t_ 1,\dots,t_ r]\subset B\) with \(| t_ i|=2\) for \(i=1,\dots,r\). If we put \(k:=\mathbb{Z}/p\), \(k_ R:=R/(t_ 1,\dots,t_ r)\) we obtain that \(B\otimes_ R k_ R=:A\) is an exterior algebra. Twisting over \(A\) first and over \(R\) afterwards, analogous minimal additive models can be developed for general primes \(p\), which are used to generalize the length estimate and its corollaries to odd \(p\) by the same underlying method.